Comfort to the Enemy
by the daroga
Summary: The Persian is but a man. Kay based.


There had been a moment, or two, when I'd thought he'd take what he had been given. It was foolish, knowing what little I did of his former life; just as he should have known the girl would be put to death for her failure.

The khanum's failure. I had no illusions the Shah had been the one to think of this.

Still, Erik was but a man. Surely that tide swept as high in him as it did other men. I felt I might get caught in its undertow that night, that slip of a girl suddenly divested of all training as she stood shivering before him. Erik, shaking himself and none of his training had been to this purpose. I was not sure which required my protection more. But it was not my place to intrude.

"Did he enjoy my gift?" the khanum rasped through the wads of gauze which hid all but her silhouette from the casual courtier.

"Very much, Your Excellency," I murmured as I rose from the carpet. I was seldom called to the chambers of the Shah's mother; the rare occasions always concerned my spying, though of a different sort than required by the Shah. He was interested in Erik's usefulness. His mother wanted everything else, though I'm fairly certain Erik never knew of the extent to which this was true.

"You're lying to me," she said, her voice still pitched low. This was her sultry tone; she was not yet angry. Just amused. Erik had cataloged them all for me, complete with quite accurate impersonations.

"Mother of the World, do you think Erik would—"

"I shouldn't presume to know what either Erik or I am thinking, if I were you."

"I crave your indulgence," I started, but cut myself off at her signal as if Erik has his lasso around my neck.

"You crave my weakness where he is concerned, is what you mean. Should I allow him to dishonor me in this way? To refuse the khanum?" I declined to point out she had not, in fact, been there; if she was slipping in this unguarded way she was surely distracted by some new deviltry. "You are always so… protective of him. I wonder if you consider your surveillance a duty at all."

I shook my head. "I am loyal only to yourself, Queen of the Heavens. And to your son," I added. "I must appear friendly to him in order to adequately monitor his movements."

A sniff, which in a less exalted personage would constitute a snort, came from behind the curtains. "Very friendly, I've no doubt. And you have not remarried, Nadir. You are a most eligible bachelor. It causes one to wonder, doesn't it?"

It wasn't a question. I had distracted her from Erik, it seemed, but I was not sure that this new direction would prove any healthier for me. Especially if I answered.

"I loved my wife," I said darkly. Damn. In this country, I was almost as much an outsider as Erik. I merely had a better mask.

I heard shifting on the embroidered cushions she reclined on. "You are a good friend to him." Her voice, though not angry in the way you would normally recognize as such, was imperious and cold and Erik had warned me. I had laughed, then, at his mimicry. "So good, in fact, to my favorite servant, that I feel I must reward you."

I didn't want it, whatever it was. "Your Excellency, to serve you is its own reward." The prescribed recitation tasted even more foul than usual and I wanted no other reward than to be sampling some of the fine liquor I knew Erik had back at his apartment. I would merely pray all the more fervently after, Allah forgive me.

If He could forgive the rest of it, a few drops of forbidden spirits would be nothing.

"You are much more loyal than my favorite, Nadir. I am certain you will not disappoint me by refusing the indulgence I wish to grant you." The khanum was never one whose word it was healthy to go against. She would not kill Erik; he was still too entertaining. But she could, I realized slowly, kill me. If it would help her cause with him. I could not believe that I meant enough to him for that to matter; but the fact remained that she was angry and quite capable of taking it out on me.

I bowed and gave my thanks and followed the eunuch she indicated to another room. The small room was hung with draperies and strewn with cushions, leading up to a low bed upon which rested a girl, her stiff limbs a mockery of sexual invitation. The girl from Erik's rooms.

Her kohl-rimmed eyes widened when she saw me and I saw a spark of hope ignite and then die as the eunuch took up his position by the door.

"Go on, then," he said, his tenor voice gruff. "You're to enjoy her, she says." I looked from her to him and back again. "It's an honor," he said, and his tone added that it was not the kind you could send back.

She trembled, just like she had before Erik. But I was not he, and she had been trained for this. Surely this was a lenient punishment in her mind. I knew her punishment was yet to come but I could not force my mind forward to decipher the tangled workings of Naga's mind; it kept slipping back, back, to that night, and Erik standing there with his hands twisting in his cloak in what I realized now was not anger or fear or nerves but desire. He'd been tempted by this girl, a fragrant feast wafted before the nose of a man dying of starvation. But Erik had no nose, and in his peculiar brand of delicacy he could not accept, and now I was to, in his place.

I am but a man.

In these situations, cornered by people not only smarter but much more powerful, it is difficult to determine one's course of action. What decision on my part had she not already prepared for? Which was the unexpected? Could I second-guess she who dared match herself against Erik? Best not to think at all, I thought.

But think I did. I tried to create a void in my mind that would allow me to carry out the task at hand, this pretty bejeweled box with the adder lying hidden inside. I touched her dark hair and recalled the shuddering folds of Erik's cloak. His hands as they clenched and released, as he sent the girl and then me away. She removed her veil, her clothes, but I barely saw her. How must he have felt? Had he never known these pleasures? How could he refuse this girl, who was made only for this and could expect nothing more in her short life, when he himself had so little to expect? Why?

The fragments and questions flowed around me like a tune barely heard and I wondered if I imagined it, just as I was imagining Erik, alone that night after we left, what he must have thought of me.

He hadn't been thinking of me at all, of course.

The rhythm of my heart seemed to echo as it beat faster. The girl was skilled, and I wished Erik had taken her, that I could have granted him this at least, this temporary surcease of pain. Stupid, timid girl, to scare him so by being scared herself. Such a stupid, little thing, like a kiss, a caress, so simple but he'd had none of it, had he, and I had been foolish to assume he had despite his knowledge and his years and…

I looked up, on the verge of ecstasy, and found I was not in Erik's rooms at all but staring into the face of the khanum as she stood framed in a latticed window that had been shielded by curtains. She did not look at us, however, and I followed her gaze to a mirror, also uncovered during my distraction, and I knew who was behind the glass.

Erik was watching this, and Naga was watching him. This wasn't for me. It was a show she'd put on for him. For herself.

I came with a rough cry, more of hatred than release, and pulled my clothes together as the rest of me silently ached for him. The girl would be killed. Nothing more of this would be spoken to me. Erik would never mention it.

But he would remember. And I would know. It did not escape me that in the midst of my pleasure I had been thinking only of his. And I would always wonder if he had liked, even just a little, watching us.

And if I liked the thought that he had.


End file.
